United States v. Carpenter

United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,v.Timothy Ivory Carpenter, Defendant-Appellant.

On
Remand from the United States Supreme Court. United States
District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at
Detroit. No. 2:12-cr-20218-4-Sean F. Cox, District Judge.

Before: GUY, KETHLEDGE, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

JANE
B. STRANCH, CIRCUIT JUDGE.

This
case returns on remand from the Supreme Court. In our prior
opinion, the majority held that the Government's
warrantless collection of Timothy Ivory Carpenter's
cell-site location information (CSLI) did not violate the
Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court disagreed. The
unconstitutionality of the Government's search was not
clear until after the Supreme Court reversed our decision,
which leads us to the question of whether the FBI agents who
obtained Carpenter's CSLI acted in good faith. Because
these agents reasonably relied on the Stored Communications
Act (SCA), we AFFIRM the judgment of the
district court.

I.
BACKGROUND

A.
CSLI and the SCA

We
begin with the basics of CSLI and the related legal
framework. CSLI refers to the time-stamped location records
generated each time a wireless device communicates with a
carrier's network by connecting to the nearest antenna,
known as a "cell site." Carpenter v. United
States (Carpenter II), 138 S.Ct. 2206, 2211
(2018). As cell phone usage has become ubiquitous, cell sites
have proliferated. Id. Each new cell site, in turn,
enhances the precision of cell phone owners' CSLI. Even
in the time elapsed between Carpenter's trial and the
Supreme Court's decision in Carpenter II, CSLI
had "rapidly approach[ed] GPS-level precision."
Id. at 2219; see also id. ("[W]ith new
technology measuring the time and angle of signals hitting
their towers, wireless carriers already have the capability
to pinpoint a phone's location within 50 meters.").

The
imminent launch of fifth-generation wireless technology,
known as 5G, promises to multiply the number of cell sites in
this country. Wireless networks once designed to carry cell
phone traffic will soon support an unprecedented number of
devices connected across industries, including autonomous
vehicles, smart homes, wearable devices, industrial
machinery, and drones. See Jill C. Gallagher &
Michael E. DeVine, Cong. Research Serv., R45485,
Fifth-Generation (5G) Telecommunications Technologies:
Issues for Congress 2-6 (2019). To handle all the
wireless data transmitted by these new technologies, carriers
must greatly increase the number of cell sites nationwide.
Verizon, for example, recently estimated that upgrading the
nation's wireless infrastructure to prepare for 5G will
require "100 times more antenna locations than currently
exist," and AT&T projected "that providers will
deploy hundreds of thousands of wireless facilities in the
next few years alone-equal to or more than the number
providers have deployed in total over the last few
decades." In the Matter of Accelerating Wireless
Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure
Inv., F.C.C. No. 18-133, 2018 WL 4678555, at *17 (Sept.
27, 2018).

Against
the backdrop of this new era of connected devices, §
2703(d) of the SCA-a provision first drafted 25 years
ago-permits law enforcement to obtain certain records of a
person's wireless communications whenever the government
"offers specific and articulable facts showing that
there are reasonable grounds to believe" the records
sought "are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal
investigation." See Communications Assistance
for Law Enforcement Act, Pub. L. No. 103-414, 108 Stat. 4279,
4292 (1994). Unlike other provisions of the SCA, the
court-ordered production mechanism in § 2703(d) does not
require law enforcement to get a warrant before acquiring
these records. Compare 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d)
with id. § 2703(a), (c)(1)(A). In this case,
the Government collected Carpenter's CSLI under §
2703(d); it did not obtain a warrant.

B.
Factual and Procedural History

Because
we and the Supreme Court summarized the facts of this case in
prior decisions, see Carpenter II, 138 S.Ct. at
2211-13; United States v. Carpenter (Carpenter
I), 819 F.3d 880, 884-85 (6th Cir. 2016), we focus on
the information most relevant to the analysis on remand.
First, a housekeeping matter: Carpenter I addressed
the consolidated appeals of both Carpenter and a codefendant,
Timothy Michael Sanders, see 819 F.3d at 884, but
only Carpenter sought Supreme Court review. Carpenter limited
his petition for certiorari to the question of whether the
Fourth Amendment permits the warrantless acquisition of CSLI,
see Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Carpenter
II, 138 S.Ct. 2206 (No. 16-402), and did not include the
other grounds for appeal that he raised (and we rejected) in
Carpenter I, see 819 F.3d at 890-93. We
adopt Carpenter I's treatment of those issues
not considered in Carpenter II. Our task here is
only to apply the Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment
analysis to Carpenter's case.

A
federal jury convicted Carpenter of robbery and gun charges
after he and others committed a string of robberies in
Michigan and Ohio between 2010 and 2012. During its
investigation, the Government sought court orders under
§ 2703(d) for Carpenter's CSLI. In response to the
Government's applications, two magistrate judges ordered
Carpenter's wireless carriers to provide "the
locations of cell/site sector (physical addresses) for the
target telephones at call origination and at call termination
for incoming and outgoing calls." Carpenter II
described the scope of the CSLI turned over by
Carpenter's carriers:

The first order sought 152 days of cell-site records from
MetroPCS, which produced records spanning 127 days. The
second order requested seven days of CSLI from Sprint, which
produced two days of records covering the period when
Carpenter's phone was "roaming" in northeastern
Ohio. Altogether the Government obtained 12, 898 location
points cataloging Carpenter's movements-an average of 101
data points per day.

138 S.Ct. at 2212. Carpenter joined Sanders's motion in
limine to suppress the cell phone data, which the ...

Our website includes the first part of the main text of the court's opinion.
To read the entire case, you must purchase the decision for download. With purchase,
you also receive any available docket numbers, case citations or footnotes, dissents
and concurrences that accompany the decision.
Docket numbers and/or citations allow you to research a case further or to use a case in a
legal proceeding. Footnotes (if any) include details of the court's decision. If the document contains a simple affirmation or denial without discussion,
there may not be additional text.

Buy This Entire Record For
$7.95

Download the entire decision to receive the complete text, official citation,
docket number, dissents and concurrences, and footnotes for this case.